For all you guys trying to do this on the cheap (or totally free), there are a number of free resources out there that you should check out. I've mentioned Audacity before, it's a very capable audio editor, and I recently heard about Lightworks, which gives you more editing power than something like Windows Movie Maker.
@OldGrouchyGamer: First thing I noticed is the use of facecam, which is a fairly subjective topic. I personally don't like them unless it adds to the gaming experience itself, such as seeing someone's reaction to a horror game. In this case, minecraft is a fairly casual game so most of the time your face is kind of neutral and blank, which adds nothing to the experience. "If you've seen one game face, you've seen them all". Of course, I may be alone in my opinion of this, so I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks of the facecam. At any rate, I think we can all agree that in it's current state it takes up a bit too much of the screen and covers over some potentially interesting stuff in-game. There was one moment in particular when you pulled up the coordinates but I couldn't see them. If you want to keep the facecam, consider cropping out the sides so we see your face only, and tinker around with putting it in a different part of the screen. I've seen quite a few streamers put it in the lower right corner.
The level of your voice is slightly below the game sounds, which should be the other way around. Sometimes you speak slightly under your voice too, which makes it a little hard to understand. I like to add a little compression to my voice to fix this. There were also a lot of keyboard sounds, experiment with positioning the mic closer to your mouth.
As for content, this episode consisted basically of farming and resource gathering, done in the typical way. In other words, these are things we've seen lots of people do before (and we've probably done them ourselves a fair bit), so we didn't get to see what makes you unique or different. I think sometimes people are afraid of doing too much work off camera when they should really be more concerned with boring their audience. You did make some cuts which were good choices.
Here's a fun experiment for everyone: Choose one of your favorite youtubers. Choose a video of theirs that is similar in length to one of your own. As you watch their video, make a note everytime they show or do something new by writing what they did and the timestamp. Now do the same for your video and compare the two. What did they accomplish and how quickly, and how did you do?
Excellent audio quality with splendid vocal technique - you cope with quiet/normal/loud vocals extremely well.
The game sounds are quite loud by comparison to your voice and should probably be reduced a fair bit, and you should definitely take measures to reduce the fairly loud mouse/keyboard noise.
The visual quality is mostly reasonable though, at times, there was serious degradation - it's quite possible that YouTube was messing with me, but if that turns out not to be the case then I'd recommend investigating what is causing this to happen, and remedy the situation.
Your camera work is pretty reasonable, and should only improve over time.
You seem to make good decisions regarding when to make cuts, though the cuts themselves seem overly harsh and, perhaps, could benefit from a small transition (such as a clock-wipe).
Presentation-wise I think you have a good balance between direct audience engagement and narration - not too much talking directly to the viewer, and not overly commenting about your in-game actions.
Although your presentation style, at times, makes you seem less than enthusiastic about playing, it doesn't come across as forced (which is always nice).
I'm not sure that having a facecam, for a video of this nature, really adds anything to the viewing experience; if you are committed to showing one then perhaps a different backdrop would be beneficial.
Overall, a pretty decent job I reckon.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Great feedback, and almost entirely matches my own self-assessment. I'm trying to get a decent boom arm, shock mount and pop filter for my mic, which I'm hoping will alleviate the keyboard and mouse noise. I've been toying with using a transition on my cuts and working out how to make it look the way I want it to, so I'm glad to hear someone else is saying the same thing. You're right though, my delivery is a bit flat at times and I need to work on showing that I'm enjoying playing. I've played a lot of poker so I'm used to masking myself somewhat. At this point, I am committed to keeping the facecam, but you're right about the backdrop -- the wall of my bedroom isn't doing anything to help my videos look good. I'll have to do some brainstorming in terms of a different arrangement that might let me use a greenscreen or even just an awesome poster.
Thanks again for the feedback, I appreciate you taking your time to help me out.
For all you guys trying to do this on the cheap (or totally free), there are a number of free resources out there that you should check out. I've mentioned Audacity before, it's a very capable audio editor, and I recently heard about Lightworks, which gives you more editing power than something like Windows Movie Maker.
@OldGrouchyGamer: First thing I noticed is the use of facecam, which is a fairly subjective topic. I personally don't like them unless it adds to the gaming experience itself, such as seeing someone's reaction to a horror game. In this case, minecraft is a fairly casual game so most of the time your face is kind of neutral and blank, which adds nothing to the experience. "If you've seen one game face, you've seen them all". Of course, I may be alone in my opinion of this, so I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks of the facecam. At any rate, I think we can all agree that in it's current state it takes up a bit too much of the screen and covers over some potentially interesting stuff in-game. There was one moment in particular when you pulled up the coordinates but I couldn't see them. If you want to keep the facecam, consider cropping out the sides so we see your face only, and tinker around with putting it in a different part of the screen. I've seen quite a few streamers put it in the lower right corner.
The level of your voice is slightly below the game sounds, which should be the other way around. Sometimes you speak slightly under your voice too, which makes it a little hard to understand. I like to add a little compression to my voice to fix this. There were also a lot of keyboard sounds, experiment with positioning the mic closer to your mouth.
As for content, this episode consisted basically of farming and resource gathering, done in the typical way. In other words, these are things we've seen lots of people do before (and we've probably done them ourselves a fair bit), so we didn't get to see what makes you unique or different. I think sometimes people are afraid of doing too much work off camera when they should really be more concerned with boring their audience. You did make some cuts which were good choices.
Here's a fun experiment for everyone: Choose one of your favorite youtubers. Choose a video of theirs that is similar in length to one of your own. As you watch their video, make a note everytime they show or do something new by writing what they did and the timestamp. Now do the same for your video and compare the two. What did they accomplish and how quickly, and how did you do?
Thanks for your detailed feedback. Double post for me, as I was replying to Goatarama when you posted. And another vote against the facecam. Although I really do still want to keep it, maybe finding a new screen position for it will be helpful as a first step until I can get a better backdrop. I absolutely take your point about the farming and resource gathering -- my fear is that since this is a hardcore mode let's play, I don't want to die off-cam. There's probably a better trade-off here though, and I will try to find it. I mentioned audio in my reply to Goatarama, and you're both on the money with your comments. I'll continue to tweak the game volume vs. mic volume and work towards better mic accessories.
I like your experiment too. This is a great idea for anyone who's trying to become a popular YouTuber.
Yeah I completely understand the hardcore thing. But just because you recorded something doesn't mean you have to use it! Right now it looks like you're editing as you play by turning off the recording and turning it back on, but you could just tell your audience that you intend to cut or skip ahead but keep the tape rolling in case something interesting happens. Then when you're in editing and you see a segment that doesn't really do much (maybe it turned out to be less eventful than you thought) you can just cut it out. I think you'd be surprised by how much you can skip before your viewers start to cry foul. Since it's a hardcore series we kind of have to trust that you aren't cheating in any way, so if you have your audience's trust for that, they certainly won't mind cutting out the grindy bits.
Yeah I completely understand the hardcore thing. But just because you recorded something doesn't mean you have to use it! Right now it looks like you're editing as you play by turning off the recording and turning it back on, but you could just tell your audience that you intend to cut or skip ahead but keep the tape rolling in case something interesting happens. Then when you're in editing and you see a segment that doesn't really do much (maybe it turned out to be less eventful than you thought) you can just cut it out. I think you'd be surprised by how much you can skip before your viewers start to cry foul. Since it's a hardcore series we kind of have to trust that you aren't cheating in any way, so if you have your audience's trust for that, they certainly won't mind cutting out the grindy bits.
You're right about not just using everything that gets recorded. Despite the harsh cuts in that video, I did record all of the intervening time and just snipped it out. I've got my transitions figured out now though, so things should be smoother starting with the next video I post, (which won't be the next video in series after the critiqued video.)
@OldGrouchyGamer: First thing I noticed is the use of facecam, which is a fairly subjective topic. I personally don't like them unless it adds to the gaming experience itself, such as seeing someone's reaction to a horror game. In this case, minecraft is a fairly casual game so most of the time your face is kind of neutral and blank, which adds nothing to the experience. "If you've seen one game face, you've seen them all". Of course, I may be alone in my opinion of this, so I'd love to hear what everyone else thinks of the facecam. At any rate, I think we can all agree that in it's current state it takes up a bit too much of the screen and covers over some potentially interesting stuff in-game. There was one moment in particular when you pulled up the coordinates but I couldn't see them. If you want to keep the facecam, consider cropping out the sides so we see your face only, and tinker around with putting it in a different part of the screen. I've seen quite a few streamers put it in the lower right corner.
The level of your voice is slightly below the game sounds, which should be the other way around. Sometimes you speak slightly under your voice too, which makes it a little hard to understand. I like to add a little compression to my voice to fix this. There were also a lot of keyboard sounds, experiment with positioning the mic closer to your mouth.
As for content, this episode consisted basically of farming and resource gathering, done in the typical way. In other words, these are things we've seen lots of people do before (and we've probably done them ourselves a fair bit), so we didn't get to see what makes you unique or different. I think sometimes people are afraid of doing too much work off camera when they should really be more concerned with boring their audience. You did make some cuts which were good choices.
Here's a fun experiment for everyone: Choose one of your favorite youtubers. Choose a video of theirs that is similar in length to one of your own. As you watch their video, make a note everytime they show or do something new by writing what they did and the timestamp. Now do the same for your video and compare the two. What did they accomplish and how quickly, and how did you do?
Thank you for your thoughtful comments. Great feedback, and almost entirely matches my own self-assessment. I'm trying to get a decent boom arm, shock mount and pop filter for my mic, which I'm hoping will alleviate the keyboard and mouse noise. I've been toying with using a transition on my cuts and working out how to make it look the way I want it to, so I'm glad to hear someone else is saying the same thing. You're right though, my delivery is a bit flat at times and I need to work on showing that I'm enjoying playing. I've played a lot of poker so I'm used to masking myself somewhat. At this point, I am committed to keeping the facecam, but you're right about the backdrop -- the wall of my bedroom isn't doing anything to help my videos look good. I'll have to do some brainstorming in terms of a different arrangement that might let me use a greenscreen or even just an awesome poster.
Thanks again for the feedback, I appreciate you taking your time to help me out.
Thanks for your detailed feedback. Double post for me, as I was replying to Goatarama when you posted.
I like your experiment too. This is a great idea for anyone who's trying to become a popular YouTuber.
Be gentle lol, also share if you like it! Thanks
I just started youtube about a week ago so yeah lol. Give me whatever feedback you can
You're right about not just using everything that gets recorded. Despite the harsh cuts in that video, I did record all of the intervening time and just snipped it out. I've got my transitions figured out now though, so things should be smoother starting with the next video I post, (which won't be the next video in series after the critiqued video.)
Here's an episode from my second season of my Solo Survival (Episode 15):
If you guys think this is a good thread, you should seriously post, when I first saw it, I thought it was a great idea!